British Pathé to open up entire film archive of 85K videos to YouTube

British Pathé is to release its entire archive of videos – totaling 3,500 hours of content – on YouTube.

The archive, which comprises 85,000 videos, contains footage of historic content from both World Wars, interviews with survivors of the Titanic, boxing legend Muhammed Ali, alongside other filmed newsreels and documentaries that the company produced between 1910 and 1976.

British Pathé is working with Mediakraft Networks to manage the content distribution and packaging on YouTube, and will aim to attract a "global audience" to the content.

The two companies will also work together to create new, original programming which gives a contemporary take on historical events.

Roger Felber, CEO of British Pathé said: “Our company has always been devoted to informing people with videos. As times are changing we are looking into new ways to reach people with our content.

"With YouTube as the biggest video platform and Mediakraft as a professional partner at our side, we have found the best conditions to ensure that our archive content will continue to act as a

pioneer in moving images and retain its heritage for future generations.”

The opening up of the archive also marks an important step for YouTube's ongoing content strategy.

Anna Gayner, manager of UK News Partnerships for YouTube, said: “We are thrilled to offer a global platform for these iconic videos and to work together with such pioneering companies in making this content available to 1 billion users worldwide.

"This is a very exciting step in hosting the audiovisual archive of the world's history.”

The move means the archive, which has been available on the British Pathe website, will now be embeddable and sharable for the first time.

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